Category: About the Ship

April 6, 1912, was a day of great relief in port city of Southampton, England.

By April 6th, the United Kingdom national coal strike had already been ongoing for 37 days. It had summarily devastated Southampton’s maritime workforce, forcing hundreds of ship workers into unemployment.

"Daily the ranks of unemployed are swelled," reported the Southern Daily Echo, "to join the knots of sailors who stand idly about."

Smoke no longer climbed from chimneys as households, in spite of the wet English chill, rationed what little coal they had left. Families were led into destitution, causing many to apply for aid and relief funds.

A contemporary newspaper report described one waiting line on Bargate Street as a "mournful queue of the workless" that had sadly become a "daily spectacle... many of the women had little tiny tots in their arms, and if some were too tired, worn and helpless to talk to each other, they hugged the sunny  side of the road... [because] warm petticoats had been pawned days ago to provide food."

The periodical Southern Daily Echo reported on March 21, 1912, that

It reiterated on April 4, 1912, the following as reports of the strike’s resolution loomed. 

And so, on the morning on April 6, 1912, the Miners Federation came together to vote on a “return to work” measure. After a reportedly spirited debate that carried on for two or three hours, they voted in favor. With that, the coal strike was at last done.

Southampton’s population was desperate to get back to work.

And thus, Recruitment Day began.

It must be emphasized that the Titanic and her peers did not come prepackaged with staff.

All manners of crew were employed on a contract-by-voyage basis, and they were recruited or otherwise picked up at various ports prior to departure--and even on the day of, according to some reports.

On the morning of April 6, 1912, Titanic had been berthed in Southampton for less than three days, having arrived on Wednesday, April 3rd, just shy of midnight. She had since been docked in Berth 44.

The coal strike had not prevented any and all persons in Southampton from obtaining work. But of those who had been restricted and without work for the duration of the strike, many were some of the poorest in the community.

Never the less, because the White Star Line had insisted on keeping its vessels on schedule regardless of the strike, some more fortunate men had been able to “sign on” to Titanic in the previous days: some, able seamen who left for Belfast back in late March, in order to board Titanic for her delivery voyage to Southampton; some, the likes of stewards and shopkeepers with prior experience.

By April 6th, cargo had begun to arrive at the White Star dock. And with the strike having ended that very morning, masses of heretofore unemployed men also gathered. 

The White Star Dock, accessible via Dock Gate 4, was reportedly mobbed.

The White Star Line’s office on Canute Road, only a brief walk away, was likewise managing an enormous crowd.

Union halls, particularly those belonging go the British Seafarers Union and the National Sailors and Firemens Union, were thronged with hundreds more workers hoping to land a gig on Titanic.

The process to sign on to a vessel was a chaotic one.

For those with prior seagoing experience, this mandated certificates of discharge and satisfactory performance on previous vessels. Regulars from similar vessels, or even a sister ship such as Olympic, of course orbited and were favored. It was a further attestation of one's competency and character to have previously served.

Violet Jessop, a stewardess on Titanic, wrote vividly of her memories of the process as she observed it years before Titanic, when she entered into seafaring life via another shipping company.

The jobseekers signed the Articles without paying much heed to the details therein. According to Violet, it was routinely assumed that the employer would have, and dearly keep, the upper hand regardless.

Violet went on to describe the bedlam of the scene.

By the time Titanic departed on April 10th, she had necessitated the employ of literal hundreds in Southampton.

Per the British Board of Trade, 908 crewmembers were aboard Titanic in total.

And of that number, a staggering 724 crewmembers signed onto Titanic's maiden voyage with a Southampton address.

The RMS Titanic, much like many other ocean liners, had a print shop.

No photos of it are known to exist.

But it was surely a small space packed with machinery and typeface. An article published in the "Printers' Register" in 1905 describes the typical liner's print shop in delightful detail.

When considering the substantial variety of ephemera that a ship would use, the presence of a printing office was certainly a necessity.

Among the paper goods printed on board an ocean liner were a variety of menus every day, multiple times per day, for hundreds of travelers in each of the passenger classes.

Additionally, the printing office producsd pamphlets on-board programs and special events, stationary, and even waiters' notepads. On Titanic and her older sister Olympic, there would have also been a need for printed tickets to exclusive, paid-access areas such as the Turkish baths.

While it might be assumed that all of these materials could have been entirely prepared in advance of a voyage, it would have been detrimental to do so because they were so often subject to change, particularly at sea.

For instance, a course boasted on a pre-printed menu could be ruined when ingredients were unavailable because of anything from spoilage to a delayed supply train and poor weather. This was all the more true for a vessel that had never sailed before; bills of fare may very well have been extemporaneous, or otherwise edited last-minute at a whim.

According to Bob Richardson of the British Printing Society, any color printing would have been completed on shore and otherwise left blank for the printing office on board, who would fill in the text of the item in black ink. The typefaces selected by White Star were commonly used in 1912 and limited in ornament, such as the British "Westminster" typeface by Stephenson Blake, as well as "Grot," more commonly known as "Gothic." The fanciest typeface was arguably Theodore De Vinne's design for passenger stationary, which read "On board R.M.S. Titanic."

Thus, there was plenty to keep a liner's printing office in constant operation. And then, with the advent of the wireless telegraph, passengers vessels would adopt yet another paper item: the newspaper.

Titanic likewise produced its own so-called newspaper, called the "Atlantic Daily Bulletin."

Interestingly, though, it would seem that Titanic did not handle the Bulletin in the usual way as described above. Veteran deep-ocean explorer and Titanic enthusiast Parks Stephenson has indicated that the Atlantic Daily Bulletin would not have fallen under the purview of the printing office, unlike documented procedure on some of Titanic's peer vessels.

According to Stephenson,  Senior Marconi Operator Jack Phillips was responsible for writing down the day's news broadcast during his First Watch. He thereafter transmitted the daily update to the Purser's Office, where it was copied with a typewriter and pinned up in the First-Class Smoking Lounge, a facility exclusively available to men.

The exact model of Titanic's printing machinery has not been discovered to date.

Additionally, the location of Titanic's printing office is still debated. There are alternating reports that it existed on either D Deck or E Deck dependent upon the iteration of the ship's deck plans. It is most commonly argued that Titanic's printshop would likely have been located on D Deck, because it was adjacent to the First-Class pantry and in the immediate vicinity of the First-Class restaurants; this arrangement would have benefitted the manufacture of menus.

Along with the ongoing bills of fare that the printshop would be tasked with every day, this location would have been ideal because it placed the printers in the proximity of wealthy customers who could commission them for custom work, such as private dining menus, luggage tags, and personalized calling cards.

In fact, a business card that was acquired on Titanic still exists. It belonged Father Frank Browne during his brief time on board, and it had been given to him by the First-Class Gymnasium's athletic instructor Thomas W. McCawley. Given its minimalist appearance, it is likely to have been printed on board. At the top edge of the plain white card, Frank noted, "Card given me by".

Titanic's printing office was tended by 53-year-old Print Steward Abraham Mishellany, a refugee from the modern country of Lebanon. After his family fled the Ottoman regime, he had then emigrated to Egypt before resettling in England, where he married a women named Grace Sarah Holland.

Mishellany was in turn assisted by Ernest Corben of London, who was 27 years old.

Abraham appears to have been a veteran employee who had also worked on the RMS Olympic. He, like many a Print Steward, was considered a special breed of worker.

The two men were likely occupied with their duties throughout the voyage.

It is presumed that on the night of April 14, 1912, that the two printer stewards were probably working late. Orders for the next day's breakfast menus were most likely given to Mishellany and Corben in the afternoon or early evening.

There is no eyewitness record that accounts for Abraham or Ernest during the sinking.

Neither of the men survived.

Because so many items were printed exclusively on board, there are very few paper artifacts that survived the sinking of the Titanic, most of which are menus.

A First-Class luncheon menu saved by passenger Abraham Lincoln Solomon sold at auction for $88,000 in 2015.